Since August 2020, hundreds of farmers’ organisations across India have been protesting against three new farm laws enacted by the central government. They argue that the new laws will together bypass state-regulated agricultural markets, remove limits on stockpiling of agricultural commodities, and deregulate minimum support prices. This will open India’s agriculture sector to corporate control, destroy the public food distribution system and small-scale food production, and devastate farm incomes.

Around 70% of India’s 1.3 billion people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and 800 million of them have relied on public food distribution during the COVID-19 pandemic. India’s agrarian economy has already been in crisis for over a decade due to indebtedness of farmers to agribusiness and money lenders, severe under investment in farming and low farm prices, as well as successive governments pushing a market-led, neoliberal approach to agriculture. Click here to read more